BARKHA DAS: And what is Jiba Korwa's explanation for being in the farmhouse that night?
K. D. SAHAY: He gave us a cock-and-bull story – pardon the expression – that he had come to the farmhouse to steal a shivling which belonged to his tribe, but Vicky Rai never had this shivling in the first place. Our contacts with police in other States have revealed that Korwa has a criminal record a mile long. He is wanted for fraud in Tamil Nadu and murder in Bihar. But the real breakthrough came when we searched Korwa's quarters and recovered a considerable amount of Naxalite literature. We believe he is one of the ringleaders of the Maoist Revolutionary Centre, an outlawed Naxalite group responsible for killing over one hundred policemen in Jharkhand alone.
BARKHA DAS: But why would the Naxalites target someone like Vicky Rai?
K. D. SAHAY: Because Vicky was investing in the Special Economic Zone project in Jharkhand. The Naxalites had been sending him death threats. Finally they got him. But we have also got the murderer – Naxalite leader Jiba Korwa.
BARKHA DAS: Thank you, Mr Commissioner, and congratulations on solving this case. That was Police Commissioner K .D. Sahay. So it looks like the final chapter in the Vicky Rai murder case has been written. Or has it? This is Barkha Das, reporting for ITN Live.
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Aired 31 March – 13:21
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BARKHA DAS: In a sensational development, well-known actress Shabnam Saxena and her secretary Bhola Srivastava were arrested today in an apartment in Khar, Mumbai, for the murder of Mukhtar Ansari. Several incriminating tapes were also recovered from the couple's possession. We have our Mumbai correspondent Rakesh Vaidya standing by. Rakesh, what do you have for us?
RAKESH VAIDYA: Well, Barkha, after Sanjay Dutt's conviction in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, this is easily the biggest scandal to hit the Indian film world. The industry is still in shock. Producers who had paid millions to Shabnam are keeping their fingers crossed.
BARKHA DAS: Do the police have any idea what might have prompted such a prominent actress to do such a thing?
RAKESH VAIDYA: Well, the police are working on several leads right now, Barkha. What I have learnt is that Shabnam was having a love affair with her secretary, Bhola Srivastava, who had made several rather graphic tapes of her. These tapes somehow fell into the hands of Mukhtar Ansari, who began blackmailing her. So Shabnam went to Azamgarh to pay off Mukhtar and retrieve the tapes. We don't know what really happened in Azamgarh, but there are witnesses who saw her leaving the house where Mukhtar Ansari's body was subsequently found. As you know, she was also one of the suspects in Vicky Rai's murder, but had been allowed to go after ballistics confirmed that the gun found in her possession was not the murder weapon. Now the police have conclusive proof that the same gun was used to kill Mukhtar Ansari. The tapes have also been recovered from Bhola Srivastava's flat, so it all seems to fit in.
BARKHA DAS: Do we have any word from Shabnam at all? How is she responding to these allegations?
RAKESH VAIDYA: Well, Barkha, the bizarre thing is that Shabnam Saxena is now claiming she is not Shabnam Saxena at all, but some girl called Ram Dulari from a village in Bihar. She says she has never been to Azamgarh in her life and was only Shabnam's stunt double. Obviously no one is buying this outlandish theory. It looks to me as if she is going to go for an insanity plea. I can say this—
BARKHA DAS: One second, Rakesh, I have just been handed a note which says that a short while ago police shot dead Jiba Korwa, the notorious Naxalite leader, as he was attempting to escape from the Mehrauli police station lock-up. The Maoist Revolutionary Centre has condemned the police action and vowed to take revenge. But coming back to the Shabnam Saxena saga, Rakesh, it seems to be getting curiouser and curiouser.
RAKESH VAIDYA: Absolutely, Barkha. At this point only one thing is clear. We will not be seeing any new Shabnam Saxena releases for a long time. No pun intended. (Laughter.)
BARKHA DAS: Thanks, Rakesh. Well, just a reminder of our top story. Shabnam Saxena and her secretary and lover Bhola Srivastava are in jail for the murder of dreaded gangster Mukhtar Ansari. We don't know how this will turn out in the end, but it has all the hallmarks of a block- buster. We will continue to keep you updated on this fast-developing story as more reports come in. And don't forget to tune in to our 'Insight' special at 19:00 hours. Tonight we focus on Bollywood's links to crime. This is Barkha Das signing off for ITN Live.
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The Bare Truth
Arun Advani's column, 1 April
>J'ACCUSE!
Dear Madame President,
As a concerned citizen of this great democratic country, I am compelled to write this letter to you. You are the highest constitutional functionary in the land. On you rests the mantle of upholding the Constitution. I felt it my duty, therefore, to remind you that the 'Right to Life and Liberty' guaranteed by Article 21 of our Constitution was denied yesterday to an Indian citizen by the name of Jiba Korwa.
Jiba Korwa who? you might ask. According to the police, he was a dreaded terrorist belonging to the outlawed Maoist Revolutionary Centre, who was shot dead yesterday afternoon by Sub-Inspector Vijay Yadav as he attempted to escape from the Mehrauli police station lock-up, where he was being detained in connection with the murder of industrialist Vicky Rai. Ballistics evidence had already proved conclusively that the bullet which killed Vicky Rai was fired from the gun which was discovered in Korwa's possession on the night of the murder. Apparently, before he was killed Korwa even signed a confession statement. His death, therefore, marks a neat, tidy ending. As I write this, the police must be patting themselves on the back for having solved this high-profile murder case without having to toil at the courts. A few gallantry medals are probably being doled out to the valiant Inspector Vijay Yadav and his team, who shot dead the feared Naxalite and made our capital a safer, more secure place. The media has already moved on to other stories. Who is interested in the life of a wretched Naxalite from some dusty village in Jharkhand anyway? And the death of a terrorist has become so banal and commonplace that we do not linger over it for more than a few moments, before moving on to much more interesting things, like the shenanigans of Shabnam Saxena or the gossip behind the latest Cabinet reshuffle.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, I come to bury Jiba, not to praise him. But what if I were to tell you, Madame President, that the man the police killed was not Jiba Korwa at all? That far from being a Naxalite terrorist, he was the custodian of an almost extinct heritage, one of the last of the planet's first humans? There, I think I am finally getting your attention.
Jiba Korwa's real name was Eketi. He was not from Jharkhand, but from an island called Little Andaman in the Bay of Bengal. He belonged to the Onge tribe, a Negrito race of primitive hunter-gatherers which still uses bows and arrows. At the last count, there were ninety-seven Onge left. Thanks to Sub-Inspector Vijay Yadav, now there are only ninety-six.
How do I know all this? you might ask, Madame President. You see, I met Eketi the day before he was killed. At three p.m. on 30 March, I presented myself at the Mehrauli police station and produced an ID which identified me as Akhilesh Mishra, Joint Director in the Intelligence Bureau looking after Internal Security, with special oversight for the Naxalite Cell. Inspector Rajbir Singh, the Station House Officer, saluted me smartly and took me to the lockup where Jiba Korwa was being held.
It was a small, claustrophobic space, ten feet by eight feet, with mouldy walls, a cracked stone floor and a small grilled window framing a sliver of blue sky. It contained a metal bed with a torn and tattered mattress, an earthen pot for water, and a filthy plastic bucket. The day was unusually warm and the heat in the cell was almost suffocating. But more than by the heat, my senses were assailed by a fetid, cloying smell, the odour of neglect. 'The bastard refuses to wear clothes, doesn't bathe, and they don't use a deodorant where he comes from, Sir,' Inspector Sin
gh offered by way of explanation.
The prisoner was lying curled up in a foetal position on the ground, underneath the window, with his back towards us, so I couldn't see his face. His skin was very dark, the colour of polished ebony, and he had close-cropped, peppercorn hair. He was naked save for a red loincloth, which appeared to have been fashioned from the remains of a T-shirt. He seemed oblivious to our presence and didn't wake up even when the Inspector prodded him with his cane.
'Get up, you bastard!' the Inspector commanded and kicked him in the back three or four times. I winced. But the blows didn't seem to register on the prisoner at all. He remained in his curled-up position, as if in a catatonic trance.
'You don't need to get physical,' I said to the Inspector and gently patted the prisoner on the shoulder.
It was like a magic formula. The prisoner reacted instantly, turning around and sitting up with alacrity. He was quite short, just under five feet, but it was a shock to see how young he was. He had a chiselled, oval face, with high cheekbones and full lips. There was not an ounce of extra fat on his body. He had the lean, toned physique of a prizefighter, but I could see clearly the welt marks where the police had whipped him. His teeth were even and dazzling white, but it was his eyes which had me riveted. Clear white, with small black irises, they seemed to ooze an elemental force. They bore into me like twin points of a laser, unsettling me. Dressed in my crisp white shirt and brown corduroy trousers, I felt exposed, naked and vulnerable in his presence.
It was only then that I noticed he was chained by his leg to the bed and there were manacles on his hands. 'This is for our protection, Sir, this chap is very dangerous, one of the ringleaders of the Naxalites,' the Inspector added, and walked out, leaving me alone with the prisoner.
I did not introduce myself. I simply took his hand in mine, looked into his eyes and said, 'I know you are not a Naxalite. I know you did not kill Vicky Rai.'
He appraised me with frank curiosity.
'Tell me your story, and I promise to get you out of here,' I assured him.
He was shy and reticent at first, but under my gentle prodding, opened up to me. What he didn't tell the police, despite three days of continuous torture, he told me in three hours, simply because I treated him as a fellow human being. He spoke in simple Hindi, but once he began his story, there was no stopping him. It was a cathartic outpouring of all the pent-up emotion bubbling inside him ever since he landed on the shores of our peninsula six months ago. He spoke of the people he had met and the experiences he had had. He spoke of his dreams and his desires, his hurts and humiliations, his hopelessness and helplessness. Above all, he spoke of his yearning for his island and his love for a blind, deformed girl called Champi, better known as the Face of Bhopal.
Did you know, Madame President, that the word 'Onge' means 'Man'? Eketi was a true man, the last of a vanishing breed.
He had ventured knowingly into what his tribe calls the land of the kwentale, or foreigners. For a brief while he was blinded by the glare of our civilization, entranced by the alluring traps of modernity, but very soon he saw through the artificial glitter of our lives to glimpse the darkness which festers in our cities and in our hearts. He was horrified by the elaborate cruelty we perpetrate on each other in the name of war and religion. He was shocked by the way we treat our women as sex objects and violate them to satisfy our lust. Within six months he had seen enough. He wanted to return to his island, to his own primitive way of life where want exists but war doesn't, where disease exists, but depravity doesn't.
He was an unlikely prophet, a memento mori who held up a mirror to our faces, but we did not heed him. He tried to correct us; we tried to corrupt him. He extended a hand of friendship; we chained him and manacled him. He sought our understanding; we killed him. His death serves as a précis of our culture, a withering indictment of all that is wrong with us. This is the bare truth, Madame President, and it is terrifying.
Even more terrifying is the fact that he had nothing to do with Vicky Rai's murder. Eketi had come to mainland India on a quest, having taken a vow to recover an ancient stone, shaped like a phallus, which had been protecting his tribe for centuries but which had fallen prey to the greed of an Indian welfare officer posted on Little Andaman. Another welfare officer called Ashok Rajput offered to help the tribe recover the sacred stone and smuggled Eketi to our shores. The quest for the ingetayi took Eketi from Kolkata to Chennai, to the ghats of Varanasi and the Magh Mela in Allahabad, then to the desert sands of Jaisalmer and finally to our capital city. The sacred rock was last seen in possession of the now disgraced guru Swami Haridas in Allahabad. That is where it was stolen by Ashok Rajput, who, unknown to Eketi, had his own agenda.
You see, Madame President, Ashok Rajput was the brother of Kishore Rajput, the forest ranger working in the wildlife sanctuary in Rajasthan who was eliminated twelve years ago because he would have implicated Vicky Rai in the killing of the two black bucks. Ashok Rajput was in love with his brother's wife, a fiery woman called Gulabo, but the widow had made a condition before she would agree to marry him – that he must first avenge his brother's death and kill Vicky Rai. You probably know more about these Rajasthani women, Madame President, but I know something about revenge. It does not have an expiry date.
So Ashok Rajput spun Eketi a yarn that the ingetayi was now in Vicky Rai's farmhouse and brought him to Delhi. Eketi stayed in the Bhole Nath Temple in Mehrauli, close to the farmhouse. While the tribal befriended the blind Champi, Ashok Rajput made his plan. On the night of the murder, he entered the farmhouse well before Eketi did, through an unused rear door. He came in wearing a blue suit, planted the shivling in the small temple in Vicky Rai's garden, and then merged with the other guests. Eketi was instructed to come in at ten o'clock, switch off the mains just after midnight, run to the temple, take the sacred rock and quickly dash out of the farmhouse through the same rear gate. The lights were switched off at exactly five minutes past midnight. That is when Ashok Rajput shot Vicky Rai at point-blank range. Then he rushed out of the hall, stole into the temple which Eketi had already reached and deposited the murder weapon in the tribal's open canvas bag. When Eketi retrieved the sacred rock from the temple and put it in his canvas bag, he inadvertently also took the gun. Ashok Rajput was hoping that Eketi would manage to smuggle the murder weapon out of the farmhouse, but the tribal was nabbed by the police and subsequently framed for murder.
The police tortured Eketi for three days, but he adamantly refused to squeal on Rajput, sticking to a code of honour that we abandoned long ago.
Yesterday, according to police accounts, Eketi ripped out his manacles, broke open the chain, used his teeth to bite through the iron bars of his window and slithered out of it. Sub Inspector Yadav, who happened to be standing behind the police station, saw Eketi escaping and challenged him to stop. The tribal charged at him, forcing Yadav to shoot him dead.
I wonder, Madame President, if you saw the pictures they put out of Inspector Yadav and his team grinning over the tribal's bloated body. Eketi's face is twisted at an absurd angle, showing the impossibility of his escape. There is a grimace frozen on his face, mocking the scales of justice.
In a way we are all responsible for Eketi's death, complicit in the act through our conspiracy of silence and our tolerance of injustice. There is an epidemic of apathy in our country which will result in the deaths of many more Eketis, unless we do something to restore the moral fabric of our society.
But this letter is becoming far too long, Madame President, and it is time to conclude it.
I accuse retired welfare officer S. K. Banerjee of stealing the sacred rock from the Onge, which compelled Eketi to undertake a hazardous journey to mainland India, where he eventually met his death.
I accuse Sub Inspector Vijay Singh Yadav of torturing and killing Eketi, in complete contravention of the laws of the land and without due process. This police officer has a history of sadistic behaviour, which has resulted in several custodi
al deaths over the years. It is time that we divested him of his uniform and put him on trial for murder.
I accuse Police Commissioner K. D. Sahay of being complicit in Eketi's death by failing to ensure his safety in the police lock-up and accepting his 'signed' confession when Eketi didn't even know how to write.
I accuse Inspector Rajbir Singh of falsely implicating Eketi as a Naxalite without verifying his antecedents. One does not expect inspectors to be amateur anthropologists, but surely anyone with common sense will know that there are no jet-black adivasis in Jharkhand with negro-style peppercorn hair.
I accuse the crime-scene experts of not exerting due diligence and failing to establish the connection between Eketi and Ashok Rajput.
Finally, I accuse Ashok Rajput of murdering Vicky Rai and framing an innocent tribal.
In making these accusations I am aware that I am opening myself to libel. I also freely admit to having transgressed the law by impersonating a government officer. I expose myself to these risks voluntarily, in the interest of serving the ends of justice.
Let the police come and arrest me. I am waiting. But my voice will not be stilled. Come what may, I shall continue to dare to tell the bare truth.
With my deepest respect, Madame President,
Your fellow citizen and loyal Indian,
Arun Advani.
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